now be directed to the rate of production of highly trained personnel to fill vacancies in institutions of higher education. A major burden will soon fall upon the graduate schools of the United States, which are the producers of persons with advanced degrees.

Office of Education statistics indicate that during the last 5 years the graduate schools of the United States have produced some 44,437 earned doctorates, or an average of 8,880 per year. Of these it is estimated that only about 60 percent enter into (or continue in) higher educational employment.

are.

Before proceeding to consider the extent to which this output must be increased it is necessary to determine what the annual needs for new personnel in teaching, administration, and organized research It will be recalled that the annual increments reflected in Chart 3 represent net increments in total staff, and not the need for annual hirings. In order to arrive at a figure for anticipated annual new employment, it is necessary to add to the annual increment a figure for replacement of personnel who have been lost through death, disability, retirement, and transfer to other occupations. As indicated earlier, the National Education Association has estimated this need for the teaching staff to be 6 percent annually.8/ The same figure has been used for administration, but the annual loss of research staff is estimated to be somewhat higher, namely 7.5 percent. Thus, it is necessary to add to annual increments, a figure representing 6 percent of the previous year's instructional and administrative staff, plus 7.5 percent of the staff engaged in organized research. The cumulative results of such computation are described in Chart 5 (page 21).

According to Chart 5, institutions of higher education in the United States will need to employ about 336,000 new professional staff members during the next 10 years. At the present rate of production of doctor's degrees (about 9,360 per year), assuming that 60 percent of these take positions in higher education, only about 56,200 of the 336,000 new staff members, or 16.7 percent, will have doctor's degrees at the time they enter the profession. The extent to which doctorate production must be increased in order to maintain even the present quality of those entering the professional staff can be judged by comparing this 16.7 percent with the corresponding 31.4 percent for entering staff members in 1953-54, 26.7 percent for 1955-56, and 23.8 percent in 1958-59.

If it is assumed that 30 percent of new staff members should hold the doctorate in order to insure quality in higher education, and if it is assumed that 60 percent of all doctor's degree recipients can be counted upon to fill such positions, it is possible to project a "need" for annual doctoral output. This need is projected cumulatively in Chart 6 (page 22). Superimposed on this chart are a cumulative estimate of doctoral degrees as developed by the Office of Education, and

CHART 5.--ANNUAL AND CUMULATIVE NEED FOR NEW PROFESSIONAL STAFF (PROJECTED), FULL-TIME EQUIVALENT

CHART 6.--CUMULATIVE NEED FOR OUTPUT OF DOCTORS DEGREES

60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69

Cumulative
Need

Cumulative

Estimate

of Doctor's Degrees

Cumulative Effect of Present Rate of Output

a projection of the cumulative effect of the present annual rate of
output. The comparison of cumulative need with estimated cumulative
output identifies the order of magnitude of the "quality gap" that
is threatened in higher education if we do not as a Nation take steps
to accelerate and increase the output of doctorates.

The Office of Education projection of earned doctorates offers some hope that supply will eventually catch up with demand.2/ In 1968, it projects the award of 17,400 doctorates which, assuming 60 percent are added to full-time staff in higher education, would provide the equivalent of 36 percent of the new persons needed in the following year, or better than the assumed target of 30 percent. The problem is, therefore, to bring about a foreseeable growth in the Nation's graduate schools in time to provide quality staff when they are needed. The eventual doubling of the output of doctorates, as projected by the U. S. Office of Education, must be accelerated.

The strain on the Nation's graduate schools of such a redoubled effort is obvious. It is estimated, for example, that current annual expenditures for graduate fellowships amount to some $35 million. It may fairly be presumed that this amount will have to be at least doubled to maintain graduate student enrollments at the desired level. An increase of this order of magnitude in the annual budget for graduate assistance will call for a major and virtually immediate increase in support for these purposes from the several agencies, organizations, and institutions interested in and taking part in the encouragement of graduate education.

One further consideration is of vital importance. Not only does the gross output of the Nation's graduate schools need to be greatly increased, and not only do the annual expenditures for such items as student assistance need to be increased commensurately, but also much greater efficiency in the production of fully trained graduate students must be effected. Not only do we need to train individual graduate students more rapidly (the minimum number of years required for the doctorate is three, but it has been estimated that it takes the average graduate student between seven and eight years to earn his degree), but efforts must also be made to produce doctor's degrees in the fields for which there is demand for them. It is not the intention of this paper to suggest that the selection of fields of study and the award of doctoral degrees should be made in accordance with some master plan; on the contrary, the importance of free choice on the part of the individual cannot be overestimated. It is nonetheless true that the estimates for needed doctorate output in the United States contained in this paper are based on the assumption that recipients of this advanced degree will receive their training in fields in which there is demand for persons trained to the level of the doctorate. There is ample evidence that current patterns of doctorate production do not coincide with the Nation's needs for persons with doctor's degrees. To the extent that

there is overproduction in some academic areas and underproduction in others, either a better balance must be achieved or the projections in this paper must be modified upward for the fields of greatest underproduction.

As has been indicated earlier in this paper, there are in the United States some 165 institutions which awarded one or more doctoral degrees in 1958. The need to double the output of doctorates will create a significant strain upon these institutions. It has already been suggested that a dramatic increase in expenditures for fellowships will be required. It remains also to be seen whether or not these institutions alone can produce the requisite numbers of doctoral degree holders. On the basis of a recent survey, the Office of Education estimates that there exists in established graduate schools today the academic and physical capacity to accommodate some 20,000 additional doctoral candidates. These vacancies do not, of course, necessarily exist in fields for which there is an unsatisfied current demand for doctor's degrees. Nonetheless, it can be argued that a significant increase in the annual output of doctorates could be effected, without increase in faculty or facilities of existing institutions, simply by applying resources now incompletely utilized.

Some of these spaces could effectively be filled by persons now engaged in teaching who have not completed the work for their doctorate. A recent Office of Education survey indicated that graduate school deans felt they could identify at least 4,000 such persons who could earn their doctorates if supported for one full year of additional graduate work. The conversion of these so-called A.B.D.'s (those who have completed "All But the Dissertation") into persons with doctor's degrees, though a one-time phenomenon, would represent a constructive step in assuring standards of quality in higher education.

But full utilization of the existing capacity of the established graduate schools will still leave a gap between graduate training needs and resources that can be filled only by expansion. Title IV of the National Defense Education Act of 1958 represents an admirable example of efforts to broaden the base of graduate education and thus enlarge the basic productive machinery of prospective college and university staff members. It is highly doubtful, however, that the fellowships and matching grants currently authorized under that program are sufficient to meet the demands heretofore described. Clearly, additional major effort is required of all interested parties and agencies if our graduate education enterprise is to meet the demands placed upon it.